5 years after the Gulf oil spill: Guarding the marsh

The BP oil spill erupted five years ago this month. In a multipart series, longtime AL.com writer Ben Raines reflects on the disaster as he experienced it, and tells how critical coastal habitat can be saved and preserved.

Alabama's shoreline is only 54 miles long, but may prove to be one of the most important pieces anywhere along the coast when it comes to the long-term future of the Gulf of Mexico.

Thanks to the productivity of Mobile Bay and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, Alabama already casts an outsized influence on the fisheries and health of the entire northern Gulf ecosystem. In part, that's because our marshes are relatively stable -- they are not washing away before our eyes, like Louisiana's marshes. But it is also because the marshes here are exceptionally rich.

Set against declines unfolding elsewhere in the region, the importance of our coastal shores and waters will only increase. And this means we have to get it right when it comes to how we spend our share of the BP oil spill fines. There is a lot at stake, and not just in Alabama.

The area that scientists describe as the "Fertile Fisheries Crescent" stretches from the mouth of Mobile Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi River. This section of the northern Gulf is considered one of the most biologically productive places in all of the world's oceans. The incredible fecundity of this system is why Alabama boasts some of the best inshore and offshore fishing in the country.

A key factor behind that productivity is the nutrient-rich flow from the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, which drains parts of four states. Just as dynamic as the energy flowing out of the Delta is the estuary system that it feeds: Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Sound. Together, they create a powerhouse of abundancy and fruitfulness that ranks on a global scale. [See my series, "America's Amazon")

Kayakers paddle through the marshes of Dauphin Island for a day of fun and fishing. Alabama's salt marshes, nurturing and sheltering a vast assemblage of marine life, are among the richest anywhere. (AL.com)

To begin to understand just how important this area is, consider the hundreds of acres of marshy shoreline that fringe Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Sound. You find marshland, in small patches and great hunks, scattered throughout the system, everywhere from Garrows Bend near the USS Alabama, to Dauphin Island and Fort Gaines on the Gulf.

Altogether, about 40 percent of Alabama's salty shoreline is marshland, a remarkably high percentage.

And that marsh, along with the grassbeds just offshore, serves as a nursery for everything from shrimp and crabs to grouper and cobia. In their earliest stages, those creatures hunt and hide in between the densely packed blades of marsh grass. As they grow older, they still stick close by, venturing out into the underwater meadows to feed.

A Gulf coast estuary without marsh cannot support crabs, shrimp or fish. It simply can't. The habitat is that important.

Paradise sinkingIn neighboring states, marshes are under siege. Federal scientists estimate that the Gulf has lost about half of the marsh that was present when European settlers arrived. Now, those losses are accelerating.

Between 2004 and 2009, the Gulf lost about 95,000 acres of marsh, compared to 45,000 in the five years prior. When the total for the most recent five years is tabulated, experts predict the losses will be higher still, hastened by damage from the BP oil spill.

The Gulf region accounts for 41 percent of the nation's wetlands. But it suffers more than 80 percent of the nation's wetlands losses each year.

Historically, most of the toll has been self-inflicted, such as when the state of Mississippi destroyed tens of thousands of marsh acres along the Mississippi Sound in the 1950s to create the longest manmade beach in the world at Biloxi.

Or look to Louisiana, where the license plates read "Sportsman's Paradise" in homage to the fishing and duck hunting in the marshes. Unfortunately, paradise is sinking: Marshes there are washing away at a rate of a football field an hour. In Louisiana, 272,000 acres of marsh vanished in the last 25 years; by the end of the next 25 years, 1 million acres will be gone, according to projections.

This was the scene in Louisiana's Barataria Bay as BP's oil sloshed into the grasses. Five years later, some heavily fouled marsh tracts in Louisiana remain toxic even to insects. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Louisiana's problems trace back to poor management of oil and gas drilling operations and relentless alterations to the Mississippi River, which robbed the marshes of sediment.

Desperate for fixes, the state is pinning its hopes on projects so complex and costly that some have likened them to NASA's campaign to reach the moon. And it might be too late anyway. The well-documented rise in global sea levels represents a catastrophic threat for Louisiana's marshes, for there is no place for these marshes to retreat to -- no higher ground -- as seas creep up.

After the Exxon Valdez spill, Alaska dedicated about half of its spill-related compensation to buying coastal land. Here in Alabama, where the shoreline measures just 54 miles, we'd need only a sliver of the pie to protect all of our sensitive coastal habitats. We could have a bigger bang for the environmental buck than any other state, even if we spent as little as $50 million.

Considering that $356 million is already coming to Alabama through the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, and $1 billion or more is expected via the RESTORE act, it seems foolish not to begin protecting the future of Alabama right away.

We'd also have a chance to do what other states are unable to do. We'd own the uplands behind the marshes, the shorelines of tomorrow. We'd ensure the bounteous shrimp, crabs and fish that make coastal Alabama what it is. We'd preserve our role in feeding the Fertile Fisheries Crescent. We'd continue to brag that we are truly a sportsman's paradise even as water rises around Louisiana's knees.

But to do all that, we have to protect what we have, right now, before we lose another bit.

Coming Sunday, Part 5: Development grinds ahead. Waters rise. Time runs short. Here are key wild places that our state needs to acquire while it has the resources. It's the final installment in our series.

Few writers in the world know the BP oil spill as well as Ben Raines. In 2010, Raines, working as a reporter for AL.com, spent months on the front lines of the crisis. His efforts to probe the disaster, and expose the failings of government and industrial interests, received national attention. Today, Raines serves as the executive director of the Weeks Bay Foundation in Fairhope.